Oct 10, 2015 06:14 PM
http://www.extravolution.com/2015/09/cry...-zero.html
EXCERPT: Since the recent publication of Kim Suozzi’s story in The New York Times, interest in cryonics has spiked. This is hardly surprising, as Kim’s story is such a heart-rending one. [...] Unlike me, she is now a de facto ‘cryonaut’ – a person actually cryopreserved. At Alcor’s facility [...] her head will remain indefinitely in a ‘neurocan’ inside a stainless-steel dewar, bathed in liquid nitrogen and monitored constantly [...]
‘Cryonicists’ like me are well aware that the majority will find this process at very least distasteful [...] What the critics don’t come up with is an alternative. One consequence of sapience is that persons don’t want to die. What are we to do about this plangent cry for continued existence? Tell people to get back in their rotting-boxes?
Neuroscientist Ken Hayworth supports cryonics research but criticises Alcor’s preservation methods. [...] This is science in action, and it is healthy. [...]
But methodological debate aside, Hayworth and the cryonics organisations agree that brain ultrastructure preservation with a view to future data extraction – or even quickening – is a worthwhile pursuit. [...] the probability of success [...] as greater than 0 [...]
Meanwhile, however, the zero-probabilists [...] are industriously constructing not technical alternatives but absolute dismissals....
EXCERPT: Since the recent publication of Kim Suozzi’s story in The New York Times, interest in cryonics has spiked. This is hardly surprising, as Kim’s story is such a heart-rending one. [...] Unlike me, she is now a de facto ‘cryonaut’ – a person actually cryopreserved. At Alcor’s facility [...] her head will remain indefinitely in a ‘neurocan’ inside a stainless-steel dewar, bathed in liquid nitrogen and monitored constantly [...]
‘Cryonicists’ like me are well aware that the majority will find this process at very least distasteful [...] What the critics don’t come up with is an alternative. One consequence of sapience is that persons don’t want to die. What are we to do about this plangent cry for continued existence? Tell people to get back in their rotting-boxes?
Neuroscientist Ken Hayworth supports cryonics research but criticises Alcor’s preservation methods. [...] This is science in action, and it is healthy. [...]
But methodological debate aside, Hayworth and the cryonics organisations agree that brain ultrastructure preservation with a view to future data extraction – or even quickening – is a worthwhile pursuit. [...] the probability of success [...] as greater than 0 [...]
Meanwhile, however, the zero-probabilists [...] are industriously constructing not technical alternatives but absolute dismissals....